Author: Khulekani Magubane

SOUTH Africa has the highest number of highly skilled women professionals of any African country who are emigrating to other countries because of limited career opportunities at home. This is according to an analysis of data by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which shows the migration patterns between all African countries and OECD countries. The OECD is made up of 35 countries, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and several European countries. This, combined with the analysis of data from the Institute for Futures Research at the University of Stellenbosch and the...

Administrative problems, together with a failure to root out abuse of the housing allocation system, is tripping up the delivery of title deeds to beneficiaries in the country’s cities, with one metro failing to hand over any title deeds in two years. Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu told MPs in a recent written reply to queries that SA’s eight metropolitan municipalities only managed to hand over 28,232 title deeds to beneficiaries between 2013 and last year. Title Deeds Pie Chart Create pie charts This disclosure comes on the back of a growing housing backlog that is most pronounced in...

The size and cost of the South African public service has grown so unwieldy that the country is 4 million taxpayers short of affording to maintain it in its current state. This is according to an analysis of data from the South African Revenue Service and Statistics South Africa, for the years 2009 and 2012, compiled by Gavin Chait of Whythawk, an open data knowledge services company. Chait found that, as a result of the comparably small number of taxpayers funding the growing public service wage, service delivery could decline or taxes would have to rise. And even though...

Twenty eight data sets: that is the amount of data we had to look through to get an interesting slice of insight into South African professionals leaving the country to work abroad. To say that data journalism is the next critical form of storytelling in reporting and that it will eventually transform the way all news rooms operate would be a misnomer. It is, in fact, happening now. My first piece of data journalism started with data on global migration from the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD). A Costa Rican data journalist at Code for South Africa, Daniela Quiros Lepiz had previously written...

SA is losing thousands of teachers annually, and most are headed to the United Kingdom. Teachers battling to get by in SA are opting to relocate to the UK, Australia, Canada and other countries where they can earn better salaries, save money or make enough to pay off their debts, according to data analysis conducted by the Code for South Africa Data Journalism Academy. And the exodus is showing no sign of slowing down. While the trend illustrates the vast opportunities available for South African professionals beyond the country’s borders, it also underscores the difficulty that SA faces in...

About the Data Journalism Academy

The Data Journalism Academy represents an initiative of Code for South Africa’s data literacy programme which is aimed at equipping participants with the skills and tools that enable them to access and explore public data.